Of course, I may be accused of excessive cynicism and pragmatism, saying that such a formulation of the question implies using a marriage partner not as an object of love, but only as a "soulless means of transportation" to more civilized and richer countries. I will leave such reproaches aside for now and try to answer in a general way the everyday questions that arise for thousands of our compatriots of any gender who have a normal sexual orientation and are going to tie their lives with a foreigner (foreign woman), but do not have reliable information about the difficulties - without this, no family on the planet can do without it so far.
Whom to choose?
When visiting Ukraine, I often heard that marriage preferences are increasingly given to former USSR citizens who have long lived abroad. They say the mentality is closer, and we grew up and were brought up in the same environment, and we can talk in a common language. But problems arise here too. For example, this one: will a marriage with "one of our own" in Germany give all those rights that I would have if I married a native German woman (a native German man)? Will I not be swapping an awl for a bar of soap - our emigrants are clearly poorer and more rightless than they are. Wouldn't it be better to have a Ukrainian entrepreneur or just a wealthy person?
Needless to say, one's own, and even a rich and enviable groom, is an ideal solution to matrimonial problems for any female resident of Ukraine. The trouble is that all our beauties clearly do not have enough such ideal guys... And then one is drawn beyond the horizon. Or simply one wants to escape from one's own Zhmerinkas, from the unbearable leaden abominations of life in regions where there are interruptions with heating, electricity, and salaries. And then exciting problems arise before seekers of happiness in Western Europe. And not everyone wants to play Russian roulette (counting on our notorious "avos" - luck)...
Of course, not all emigrants from the former USSR earn like Andriy Shevchenko or the Klitschko brothers. Rather, the opposite. On average, the income of local suitors and brides is somewhat higher compared to their fellow emigrants. But! In all other respects, the following should be kept in mind. From Ukraine and the CIS, people move to permanent residence in Germany only along two main (apart from marriage) lines. The first stream is the Germans of Ukraine and other countries of the former USSR. This category of settlers receives German citizenship practically within the first year. The second category (more massive for Ukraine) is those who immigrated along the Jewish line. Although Jews are considered refugees in Germany, they actually have the same rights as Germans from the former Union. This means that their spouses, although not immediately, will be able to receive the same civil rights: to social security, housing, education, etc. In other words, you lose nothing in this case by preferring "one of your own"...
The Inertia of Collapse
Statistics show that the lion's share of mixed marriages where the German half is local, and not, so to speak, "exported" from Ukraine or other countries of the near abroad, quickly break up. It is precisely such mixed marriages that are the most problematic. What united them, alas, separates them - dissimilarity. Several examples of my acquaintances, Ukrainian women who could not withstand the bonds of marriage with a German, for all the variety of details, have much in common. Such a marriage begins, as a rule, with unobtrusive investments by the German husband in "our" wife. He pays for her language courses and even professional training.
My neighbor Hans, owner of a small consumer electronics store, had designs on the future of his lovely one - Yulia M., a general practitioner from Chernivtsi. One of the conditions he set for his beloved was simple and understandable in a human way: first get on your feet (language, profession), then give birth to my child. Every month Hans subsidized her. He allocated over 500 euros from the family budget for studies. Naturally, for pocket money and incidental expenses he gave Yulia only 100 euros. He gave her 1,500 euros to get a driver's license. But at the same time, thrifty Hans loved accounting and control - every week he checked receipts from stores.
Such checks caused a storm of indignation in Yulia. The girl would come to my wife in tears and curse the day she got involved with this "idiotic alien" and "German skinflint". Deeply unhappy and offended, Yulia nevertheless, without batting an eye, asked her Hans to give her 1,000 euros for a trip to Chernivtsi to visit her parents. She received a polite refusal. Hans hinted that she could earn that amount herself by caring, say, as a nurse for elderly people. Yulia got even angrier and began... to pilfer money from Hans when he came home tipsy. The collected sums were enough to relieve depression in the form of two or three trips a year to Ukraine.
Hans's dream was to take a bank loan and open a Praxis (his own medical office), where Yulia could earn well as a therapist. (For information: doctors in Germany rarely receive less than 5,000 euros net.) And then Yulia did what Hans feared so much: she hid her pregnancy from him. She reported it when it was no longer possible to have an abortion. They didn't talk for a year, then divorced. Now Hans pays child support monthly until the child turns 23. And this allowance, by court order for Yulia as a single mother and her daughter, amounts to 2,000 euros. Why should she work?
The question: who was right and who was not? And was that Hans so bad, having received in full for his kindness?! German lovers of only pleasant things in marriage do not immediately understand that our pussycats sometimes have steel claws.
Into foreign slaves?
To be fair, it must be said that some German husbands also take advantage of the situation. I heard about one such Alfred V. He adores girls from Ukraine, but in the heat of love, the rascal, does not forget that after two years of marriage, divorcing his sweetheart will be quite costly (see the above example with Hans). And therefore, without waiting for the foreign wife to pass the legally prescribed time barrier (until then using her as a housemaid and sex machine), he runs to the foreigners office and tearfully asks to urgently divorce him from the fraudster, who deeply doesn't care about him; the scoundrel's main thing, he says, is to get a foothold in Germany. Of course, such a 'sufferer' is believed much more than another newcomer Zina, who cannot string two words together in German.
Even without taking such extreme examples, when each of the marriage partners only seeks to use the other, integration for any of our compatriots there, in Europe, oh how hard it is! Career, pride, a worthy position in society, and a number of other soul-flattering attributes of a past life usually have to be forgotten. The difference in mentality affects everything: in habits, in relations with parents, friends, in private and professional life.
The desire of Westerners to conclude a prenuptial agreement is not always acceptable to our people. And in this, by the way, there are more advantages than you think! The main thing is to clarify every detail with an interpreter.
It is especially difficult when the spouses were on different rungs of the social ladder in their own countries. For example, I know a woman from Kyiv, a former stall seller, who claimed about five years ago that her German, a major company manager, was simply a godsend. Now Lena K. is more cautious in her flattering assessments of her husband. Wealth, comfort, prosperity no longer please her much; she increasingly complains of 'terrible boredom,' since she and Kirsten have virtually no points of contact outside the bedroom...
Traps for a naive girl
One is struck by the abundance of dating services in Ukraine offering to find a rich husband in the West. The eyes just water from such enticing promises. They make some provincial girl, disappointed in the boorishness and rudeness of her Vasya, go weak at the knees. And to spite him... Well, then it goes according to the usual pattern.
I hasten only to warn seekers of happiness in foreign lands that there are plenty of pitfalls here... Do not forget that for a matchmaker the main thing is profit, money, not your fate. And among the grooms - this should be alarming - there are plenty of losers. By their own words, they spent a lot of effort on their careers and did not find suitable wives. It is clear that German women ignored their merits. And so these fellows, with purely German thoroughness, having suffered a fiasco at home, set out to look for wives who are simpler and more accommodating, not so picky and fastidious.
Recently, some large dating services have been organizing trips to Ukraine for German grooms in groups. So, one such group of nine Germans managed to meet 600 girls in a week. I will remain silent about the number of intimate encounters 'to test a future wife in bed.' Everything was in order there too. Then the Germans invited their chosen ones to Germany on so-called 'fiancée visas,' when a woman must either marry within 90 days or leave the Federal Republic of Germany.
And one more thing. Do not forget that more often than not, the German who will marry a foreign woman is a skinflint, a charlatan, a domestic tyrant. However, there are happy exceptions. The main thing is psychological flexibility, the ability to compromise, mutual respect, a sense of humor, and, of course, mutual attraction, and even better - true love... The worst is if the marriage to a foreigner is driven by mere unsettledness, economic troubles, uncertainty about the future, or personal tragedies. Such motives rarely lead to a successful marriage abroad. It is hard to pretend for a lifetime. And does one need such a life? Let every seeker of family happiness in a foreign land answer that question for himself.
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